The Glands Regulating Personality: A Study of the Glands of Internal Secretion in Relation to the Types of Human NatureBerman, Louis
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The Glands Regulating Personality: A Study of the Glands of Internal Secretion in Relation to the Types of Human Nature
Berman, Louis
Endocrinology; Personality
least desirable of endocrine instabilities because of the concomitant
mental effects. Even from the purely selfish point of view, the
standpoint of enlightened selfishness, the post-pituitary type must
beware of excesses. For disturbances of menstruation, psychic fears,
anxieties, states of suspicion and obsession, various pains are among
the penalties.
A period of post-pituitary excess as an effect of disease, pregnancy,
or the rapid life, may be followed by post-pituitary deficiency as a
result of exhaustion of the gland. The girl or woman then becomes fat
and suffers from headaches (the fair, fat and forty type) yet retains
a certain capacity for enjoyment which enables her to continue gay,
happy and gentle, kind, interested. So she contrasts with the thyroid
deficient who gets fat, but also dull, stupid, even morose.
The masculine pituitary personality, the man with a dominant anterior
pituitary gland in a roomy sella turcica with plenty of space to grow
in, is the ideal virile type. They are generally tall (unless the
growth of the long bones was checked too early by a social precocity
of the testes) with a well-developed strong frame, large firm muscles,
and proportionately sized hands and feet. The head is of the marked
dolichocephalic type, flattened at the sides, face is oval more or
less, with thick eyebrows, eyes rather prominent, nose broadish and
long, lower jaw prominent and firm. Prominent bony points like the
cheek bones, the elbows and the knees, the knuckle joints of the hands
and feet. The teeth are large, especially the upper middle incisors,
and they are usually spaced. The arms and legs are hairy. High grade
brains, the ability to learn, and the ability to control, self-mastery
in the sense of domination of the lower instincts and the automatic
reactions of the vegetative nervous system, the rule by the individual
of himself and his environment are at their maximum in him. The
ante-pituitary personality is educable for intelligence, and even
intellect, provided the proper educational stimulus is supplied. Men
of brains, practical and theoretical, philosophers, thinkers, creators
of new thoughts and new goods, belong to this group. The distinction
between men of theoretical genius, whose minds which could embrace
a universe, and yet fail to manage successfully their own personal
everyday lives, and the men of practical genius, who can achieve and
execute, the great engineers, and industrial men lies in the balance
between the ante-pituitary and the adrenal cortex primarily. Men like
Abraham Lincoln and George Bernard Shaw belong to this ante-pituitary
group.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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